Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies

More about the Centre

The Centre was established by the University of Wales in 1985, with a well-stocked library which has grown over the years into an invaluable resource for Welsh and Celtic Studies. The Centre’s first Director was Professor R. Geraint Gruffydd, and its first project was the preparation of an edition of the work of the Poets of the Princes , published in seven volumes (1991–6).

In 1993 the Centre moved to purpose-built accommodation adjacent to the National Library of Wales. In the same year Professor Geraint H. Jenkins took over as Director, and the following fifteen years saw a considerable expansion in our activities, with three research projects soon running concurrently.

The Centre holds regular events open to the public, including annual fora relating to our current projects, major Celtic Studies conferences, and fortnightly seminars during the winter and spring terms.

Central to the mission of the Centre, Celtic Studies is a wide-ranging
academic discipline encompassing the languages, literatures, history and
cultures of Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Brittany, Cornwall and the Isle of Man,
as well as wide areas of continental Europe and Asia Minor in ancient times. Some
claim to see essentially Celtic forms of art, music, literature, religion, and
even world-view. But the most scientifically well-founded basis for unifying
the study of the Celtic peoples is the systematic relationship of their
languages. Their comparison implies a common origin, as first recognized by
Edward Lhwyd in his Archaeologia
Britannica in 1707. To a surprising degree the Celts of today’s popular
imagination and even for the experts are still Lhwyd’s Celts. This is how they came
to view at the dawn of scientific inquiry - and year of the founding of the
British state - on the common ground discovered among the Britons, Gaels, and
ancient Gauls. Having grown a thick network of roots in western thought for the
intervening 300 years, out-dated ideas about the Celts persist, impervious to
the flood of challenging new evidence from historical linguistics, archaeology,
and genetics. A radical reconsideration of the origins of the Celtic languages
and groups called Celts is central to our current AHRC-funded project on Atlantic Europe in the Metal Ages
(AEMA).

It is beyond doubt that the peoples of the Celtic-speaking regions have made
a major contribution to European civilization from the Bronze Age onwards.
Their history has been one of marginalization and oppression by imperial
powers, but their languages and cultures continue to survive, adapt, and
develop in the modern era. The bardic poetry of Wales and Ireland is one of the
little-known treasures of medieval Europe, and yet both countries have vibrant
contemporary literatures too. Although Celtic Studies provides a wealth of
unique insights into tradition and cultural heritage, it is not a
backward-looking discipline, but offers essential opportunities for the study
and enrichment of modern culture and planning for the future of our languages
and communities. As public awareness increases concerning the rapid extinction threatening
the Earth’s thousands of smaller languages, today’s Celtic languages hold a
special place as laboratories for survival in intimate contact with the world’s
dominant language.